THE NEW FRONTIER OF ARTICLE 21: JUDICIAL RECOGNITION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS IN INDIA

Abstract

The Supreme Court's decision in M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India (2024) crystallised a doctrinal shift by expressly recognising, within Articles 21 and 14 of the Constitution, a fundamental right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change, distinct from though closely related to the established right to a clean environment. This paper offers a constitutional reading of that judgment and argues that its significance lies less in the immediate relief it granted concerning power-line governance in Great Indian Bustard habitat than in the Court's reframing of climate harm as a justiciable constitutional injury. The decision tightens the interpretive circuitry between Article 21, Article 14 and the environmental ethic embedded in Articles 48A and 51A(g), recasting climate protection as a condition of dignified life and equal citizenship. The paper traces the doctrinal lineage from Francis Coralie Mullin through M.C. Mehta, Virender Gaur and Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum to Ranjitsinh, situates the decision against comparative climate jurisprudence from the Netherlands, Pakistan and Germany, and advances a critical thesis: the right's breadth risks juridical indeterminacy and strategic capture unless courts develop enforceable standards that distinguish mitigation duties from adaptation entitlements and that operationalise Article 14's distributive logic for climate vulnerability. Drawing on the Supreme Court's own final disposal of the underlying dispute in December 2025 and its parallel supervisory intervention in Ridhima Pandey v. Union of India, the paper closes with concrete proposals for legislative and judicial follow-through.